Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The Plasma pistol was a fairly simple device. A small capsule of fairly standard chemistry one could find in an acetylene torch, was electromagnetically crushed inside the barrel of the pistol. The capsule instantly turned the chemicals into a low pressure plasma with a very short life. It stayed plasma and effective for just about a second. Plasma by nature is stripped of its electrons and hence is positively charged. The negatively charged barrel of the pistol expelled out the plasma at tremendous speed between ten and thirty times the speed of sound depending on the length of the barrel and the strength of the barrel charge.

  In space the plasma had an effective range of 150 to 200 meters before plasma dissipated away. It was a light, short range weapon meant for air less environments, with no recoil. It was also the perfect weapon for the task at hand. Jesus probably needed only one or two shots, but adrenalin was pumping through his veins, the shot four times. At that range he didn’t miss any of the shots. Then he opened his thrusters slightly to move out of the way. The Shaitan was in his death frenzy. The Shaitan didn’t open his thrusters and just kept drifting away in space.

  Jesus hurried back to the hatch to see a strange sight. The heretic who had been fighting for his life was being tended to by another heretic warrior, who was helping patch his suit. The two non-believer Shaitans who had been fighting with the heretic were floating dead, and a third non-believer Shaitan was mindlessly shredding the two already dead non-believers to shreds! The heretics were using zombies!

  Jesus checked his faceplate display and realized that there was still some time before the radio blackout effect would lift. So he touched the heretic who had just emerged into the scene, presumably from inside, to inquire and get a situational report. It was turning out to be an exceptionally hard battle on this shuttle. All the instructors of the academy were either by coincidence or by design on this shuttle. The heretics knew the status of another Shaitan by touching them, that’s why they knew that most were trainers and not trainees.

  More than half the heretics who aimed for this shuttle managed to land on it or on the space station. So by Lt. Pimenta’s estimate over thirty five heretic warriors must have made it to the shuttle. By the estimate of the heretic warrior reporting to Lt. Pimenta, not more than seven or eight had survived the assault. In fact the heretics were losing the battle till they were able to convert a few of the enemy into zombie slaves. The Zombies became a force multiplier for the heretics. It not just reduced the enemy count, but bolstered their own numbers. The zombies were particularly effective in killing their own non-believers because those confused non-believer Shaitans were ripped up in a frenzy of limbs even before the hapless, surprised and confused creatures could figure out what was happening.

  The fighting had been particularly vicious inside the pilot chamber. It had not been taken cleanly. The heretic warriors had to rush to the pilot chamber in a direct assault without stealth because the pilot had started the engines and could have pushed off any time. The pilots must have been waiting to load additional evacuees, but just a touch on their tasting station could have sent the shuttle on its way. The bad news was that both the designated pilots were dead. From what he understood about Shaitan protocol from the heretics, the death of the designated pilots could severely compromise the mission. He would have to figure that part out, but first he had to ensure that the shuttle was clear of any hostiles, especially any suicidal enemy, who might hide and decide to blow up the shuttle once all his marines and heretic warriors were on board.

  The heretics were carrying out a sweeping operation on board the shuttle for any remaining enemy, then they could be on their way. He decided to leave the job to the heretics, who were far more capable of sweeping a shuttle of their own kind than a human marine. He could see on his tactical display that the other shuttle hadn’t moved away either, so he could assume that the operations on that shuttle had been successful as well. At what cost he didn’t know yet.

  Lt. Pimenta’s attention turned to the human marines, who had been given the job of keeping the rest of the Shaitans bottled up inside the space station. The marines were performing that job fairly well, because Lt. Pimenta couldn’t see new non-believer Shaitans arriving towards any of the two shuttles from the space station. The fact that the marines were performing their given task so well worried Lt. Pimenta. It meant that Sergeant Dorji had ordered his men inside the hatch of the space station to prevent the Shaitans from exiting at all. It was the best way to block the exit, but would put the marines in far more danger than shooting from outside the hatch. There was no restriction on shooting at or inside the space station. It was not needed as part of their plan. In fact their plan required the space station to be blown up.

  The Marines no longer needed to bottle up the Shaitans inside the space station. This shuttle was taken, and in all probability the other one had been taken as well. He needed to order the marines to make a fighting retreat to the shuttles. The Shaitans inside the space station were sure to follow, but that couldn’t be helped. Once the last marine had made it into the shuttle and the doors closed, the heretics had informed him, that the shuttle was more than capable of taking care of any non-believer Shaitan floating outside. They were still in the radio blackout, so he could not order a retreat over the radio for his Marines. Lt. Pimenta decided to first check out the status of the other shuttle and ensure that it was secure. Otherwise the marines could be massacred by the shuttle if it was in the control of the non-believers.

  At full suit thrust, Lt. Pimenta was able to cross to the other side of the space station and literally crash into the other shuttle in fifteen seconds. Once inside the hatch, he could easily identify Master Scent of Swiftness, who was the largest Shaitan warrior he had seen, and stood taller than the rest of the Shaitans. He touched the suit of the heretic leader and opened up a channel by suit induction. He let the heretic leader know the hard battle that had taken place on the other shuttle and the severely depleted ranks of his warriors on that shuttle. He also let the heretic leader know the disaster about both the designated pilots being killed.

  Scent of Swiftness immediately ordered some of his warriors to move to the other shuttle and take one of the zombie pilot along with them. The Shaitan traffic control needed the taste signature of only one pilot, and this shuttle had taken both pilot alive.

  The task of confirmation done, Lt. Pimenta decided not to wait for the radio blackout to get over, but to head to as many of the hatches of the space station as he could, and give the order personally. Every second could save the life of a marine, by retreating as fast as they could and avoid a life or death struggle.

  The space station had six exit hatches, one on every face of the cube. When the Marines crash landed on the space station, Shaitans had been pouring out of all six hatches on every face of the cube. The Marines had crashed into the space station at far lower speed than the heretic warriors, hence almost all of them had found their target. As they would find out, only two marines had missed the space station altogether and gone for another spin around the moon. The rest of the Marines had quickly reached their designated hatches to stem the flow of Shaitans.

  The initial surprise of being boarded and fired upon at the hatches had stopped the Shaitans in their tracks inside the space station, enabling the marines to get inside the hatches. The Shaitans were unarmed. Their suit claws were the only weapon they had. In two of the hatches, the Marines were able to pump enough large caliber Shaitan grade bullets while anchored inside the hatch to push back the press of the Shaitan crowd at the exit and get enough time to plant explosives near the hatch. The corridors leading to these hatches collapsed effectively sealing shut these exit.

  On the other exits the Marines hadn’t been that lucky. They were having to fight with their guns and their daggers to keep the Shaitans from exiting. On the first hatch, Lt. Pimenta saw the amazing sight of three Marines floating just outside the hatch having been pushed out by the Shaitans. The Marines were constantly firing their gu
ns into the hatch and using their suit thrusters to compensate for the recoil and stay close to the hatch. Plasma guns were more efficient in space, but good old fashioned bullets had the stopping power needed to block the Shaitans from exiting.

  Lt. Pimenta touched each one of the Marines and repeated his order over the suit induction channel. “Retreat to the shuttles and watch your back as you go!” The Marines retreated without the need for any further persuasion. They didn’t need to physically turn to watch their backs. The tech-head Marines simply switched on the rear helmet camera and either took the feed directly inside their head or on their faceplate display.

  By the time Lt. Pimenta managed to reach the second hatch, he could see the Marines exiting the hatch on their own. He checked his countdown display on his faceplate screen and realized the reason why the Marines had started the retreat on their own. The countdown displayed T minus five minutes. The space station had to be destroyed before the radio blackout lifted for good. The space station had the only functioning radio transmitter left on this moon, which could let the warrior command center on World #2 know what was really happening on this moon, and that couldn’t be allowed.

  Someone inside the space station was sure to have tried to broadcast a report to the command center, which the computer would loop and keep trying to send. The moment the radio blackout got lifted, it would take the Shaitan computer a fraction of a second to burst broadcast the report. The space station and its radio had to be destroyed before that. The Shaitans didn’t build anything in space that was flimsy. Least of all this space station that was designed to last centuries. The Marines couldn’t just rig up some explosives as they left, to blow up the space station.

  It would require something far more powerful, and exactly such a thing was on its way. The Marines, the heretic warriors and the interplanetary shuttles had to put a fair distance between itself and the space station before the countdown reached zero. Lt. Pimenta decided to check as many exit hatches of the space shuttle as he possibly could to ensure that the Marines were on their way. If the Marines lost track of time or were unable to get away from the space station in the next one minute, then it would be a death sentence from them.

  As Lt. Pimenta was about to turn towards the next face of the space station. He saw an amazing sight. Behind the retreating Marines, the exit hatch of the space station burst out and expelled a seemingly uncountable number of Shaitans. It was as if a plug had been opened and water had burst out. The initial moment of alarm, gave way to amazement, when Lt. Pimenta realized that those Shaitans were not moving their bodies or using their suit thrusters. These were just the dead bodies of the Shaitans. The Marines had taken Lt. Pimenta’s words literally and plugged the hatch with a heap of the dead bodies of the Shaitans! As the Marines retreated, the live Shaitans behind that dam of dead bodies were pushing to get out!

  Lt. Pimenta managed to eyeball two more exit hatches and ensure personally that the Marines retreated from them before he had to make a rush towards the shuttle himself. The heretics inside the shuttles had specific instructions. At T minus three minutes they were to shut the hatch of the shuttles and open up the engines of the shuttle full throttle to get as far away from the space station as the shuttles could manage in one hundred and eighty seconds.

  From the acceleration parameters of this class of shuttles that the heretics had provided, the shuttles needed those three minutes to get to a reasonably safe distance. If any Marine or heretic warrior did not make it into the shuttle by the times its hatches were closes, then they were to use their own suit thrusters and try to put as much distance as they possibly could and pray for the best. There was a slim probability that they might still survive.

  Lt. Pimenta was one of the last to make it to his designated shuttle-1 before the hatches were closed. On the way he had shot one of the non-believer Shaitans trying to board the shuttle. The poor creature was not armed and was a sitting duck, who probably didn’t even realize that the shuttle had been taken over by the enemy. He simply had made a break for the shuttle, the moment the Marines retreated from blocking the exit hatches of the space station.

  Lt. Pimenta was not ready for the acceleration surge of the shuttle. It pinned him to the side of the passageway near the exit hatch at close to 3 G and kept that acceleration force up for all of three minutes. While the Marines of the shuttles stayed pinned to whichever surface of the shuttle they happened to splat onto, when the shuttles opened up their thrusters, the heretics inside the shuttle were hardly bothered. Some even moved around!

  Outside the shuttles close to the space station, a tragic drama was playing out. Despite the hopes and prayers of Lt. Pimenta, four Marines had not made it back to the shuttles in time. They had opened up their suit thrusters and were trying to make a desperate getaway. Unfortunately no one would hear from them again. All the heretics who had managed to make a landing on the shuttles or the space station, and managed to survive the battle were onboard the shuttles. Only the four human marines got left behind.

  Meanwhile the second last of the ‘packages’ released by USC Hercules was moving inexorably towards the space station and its doom. This last of the missiles was the smallest of the lot. It had been deliberately chosen to be so. A 1.2 kiloton nuclear fission warhead is somewhere on the lower end of the scale of a tactical nuke. It was just about the right strength to cause massive damage to the space station, and yet have a small enough blast radius to enable the shuttles to make a safe getaway.

  It was a testament to the robustness of Shaitan engineering, that despite a nuke hitting the space station, it did not get blown to smithereens, and the human planners had not expected it to either. It was massively damaged with large hole on one of the faces of the cube. As expected the force of the blast pushed the space station down towards the moon, where it went crashing. That ensured that the space station was well and truly destroyed.

  Once the EMP from the nuclear blast cleared, the heretics went about their first order of business in sending the distress call as planned to the warrior command center, signed with the taste signature of the zombie pilots. Then they broadcast a message to the pilots of the local shuttles who had made a getaway from the space station before it had been attacked and were blissfully unaware of what had transpired on the space station. The local shuttles were informed to rendezvous with the interplanetary shuttles in orbit for evacuation.

  All four local shuttles arrived close to the interplanetary shuttles shortly, where they were dispatched to hell with a single missile each at close range. The local shuttles did not get enough time to even realize what had happened let alone transmit the treachery to warrior command center.

  The next order of business was to signal the last of the packages. This could be done freely, since there was no one in the neighborhood to notice a short and relatively weak radio burst meant to signal something just about a thousand kilometers away, which was the distance the last package had drifted, on its way towards the moon. On receiving the signal, the package hurried the last bit of its journey by starting its engines instead of just coasting, and reached the orbit of the moon in less than ten minutes.

  This package was not a missile but a standard issue USC-GCF disposable supply pod, first designed for the Alpha Shaitan campaign to resupply from space, a Company of Marines. It was the size of a medium size bus that seats about forty, with similar internal volume. It was basically a hardened carbon fiber shell that felt like tough plastic. The shell had limited heat shielding capacity to enter thin atmosphere and low gravity moons like the ones Shaitans tend to live. The shell had a standard missile engine and navigation system, but with a bigger fuel tank.

  It was not armored, but was disposable and cheap, meant to drop supplies cheaply to the Marines. This supply pod was carrying replenishments of food, water, ammo, maintenance hardware and other paraphernalia soldiers need on a long mission. It was also carrying the special weapons that would be needed to complete the next stage of the mission. The s
huttles closed in on the orbiting package. The Marines and the heretics loaded the packages on to their shuttle with gusto. Lt. Pimenta couldn’t wait to get out of his suit and sponge himself.

  Last order of business on the moon was to pick up the Marines and the heretic warriors who had missed their landing and gone about circling the moon on one more orbit. Both the Marines who had missed were recovered and all but one of the heretic warrior was found as well. The shuttles then proceeded to their respective destinations, and it was time for Lt. Pimenta to take stock of the mission at its half way mark. He realized that although they had taken casualties, it could have been far worse. It was definitely better than the average case scenario that had been anticipated at the planning stage. Even though there were a few moments of scare, the mission was still on track, and that’s all that counted.

  ---XXX---

  “Warmaster, there are survivors from the attack on the academy!” Scent of Vigor rushed to give the good news physically. “We just got first hand confirmation from the survivors. They corroborate the picture we have been piecing together from our observations of the moon. The Ka-Baal fleet released missiles before turning away from the path of the moon towards the current course they are following. The missiles travelled silently on their own momentum for almost a cycle to reach the moon, and then blew the academy and the space station above it.

  “There are unlikely to be survivors from the academy itself, but many of the occupants of the space station were able to evacuate in the few milli-cycles of warning the missiles gave, as they rushed towards the moon. The proctor had made the initial alarm report directly to us, when the missiles had turned on their engines. In that report he had told us that he had ordered an evacuation of the academy, and ordered the beings on the space station to move away using the docked shuttles.